Professor Casey Weissman-Vermeulen, Director of the Housing Clinic, spoke with the Daily Orange about local housing advocate CNY Fair Housing and its future as federal grants and funding are diminished for education initiatives.
CNY Fair Housing is a local nonprofit organization that receives funding through grants from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. It responds to tenant or renter discrimination cases by conducting investigations and taking legal action when necessary. But it now faces the elimination of grant funding for its education and outreach efforts, which are being challenged in court.
CNY Fair Housing’s mission, Weissman-Vermeulen said, extends beyond legal enforcement. He also said the organization also works to raise awareness about how housing discrimination impacts individual families and the greater community.
“Issues of discrimination and then isolating folks to areas of concentrated poverty, lead to all kinds of problems that we all sort of collectively pay for in terms of folks not being able to access jobs and being upwardly economically mobile or perhaps engaging in crime or non-legal economic activity,” Weissman-Vermeulen, a former attorney for CNY Fair Housing, said.